


Lone Dancer

by istia



Series: Dancing in the Rain [2]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s04e07 Blackout, Gen, POV First Person, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:47:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel to <em>Dancing in the Rain</em>, written for the Time-Stamp meme to a request for a story set a year before the events in the original story. I highly recommend reading the original story first, though, and reading this one second as an addendum of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lone Dancer

I was a loner, set in stone for life. Cowley'd accepted it eventually as the lesser of two evils: Alone or Gone. Always a pragmatist, our Cow.

I had my patch and I was king of it. Sole ruler of everything in my purview, all of which I knew intimately from the drains to the chimneypots, from the junkies and glam girls to the mums and grans. Cowley deferred to my knowledge and I deferred to his orders: that was the limit of a partnership I was willing to accept. Any rate, it got the job done, which was the point for both of us. The past was over and filed; all that mattered was now.

The problem with a pragmatist like Cowley was that sometimes the Now overrode the bigger picture. When the stakes were high enough, he ignored the unspoken rule governing my service in CI5 and lumbered me with a temporary partner.

Thus occurred my first one-on-one meeting with Ray Doyle.

I knew about Doyle, of course. I was a loner, not a hermit. I lived on my patch like any good undercover man, but I spent as much time at HQ, doing paperwork and consuming gossip like milk jelly, as any other self-preserving member of Cowley's squad of hand-picked lunatics. Even a loner had to work with other teams as back-up on ops and had to depend on other agents' information and skills, which could underlay the choices made and directions chosen all the way down the line--a bloody precarious bridge made of eggshells unless you could judge the merits of the people who had a hand in building it.

I trusted Cowley, the engineer who ultimately fitted together those fragile eggshell structures all our lives depended on. But, then, I'd trusted Cowley three years and eight months ago, too. Even Cowley's not infallible, and trust isn't an absolute. Cowley the pragmatist understands that, too.

So I knew about Doyle before I got the curt message from Alpha One ordering me to work with Doyle in the search for a banker's kidnapped wife and kid being held somewhere in my territory. Big op, big stakes--big guns. I was the King of South London, but Doyle was one-half of Cowley's ace team. The bulliest of the Bully Boys. The goldenest of the golden-haired lads.

I didn't know them, but of them: seen the two of them at HQ a time or two in passing; heard a variety of tales about them in the restroom, some taller than others; and read a few of their classified ops reports on the sly. Didn't take much effort for me to peg Doyle's partner, Bodie, as a useful, elegant thug. Cool under all manner of pressure, steady as a rock under fire, and utterly dependable--unless his partner was threatened.

Then it was every man but Doyle for himself, roses and lavender be blighted, and Yes, sir, Mr Cowley, go fuck yourself.

I liked Bodie, at least in the abstract since I'd never met him. You knew exactly where you stood with a man like Bodie at your back. You knew he'd _be_ at your back come hell or high water...as long as his partner was safe. You knew he'd fight to the death to follow through on whatever Cowley demanded of him for the sake of CI5, Queen and country...as long as his partner was safe.

I imagined Cowley the pragmatist likely railed about the metaphorical small print in the personal contract Bodie had written for himself with CI5 (some of the mission reports, fascinatingly, required barely any reading between the lines to get a proper picture), but the Cow was too old and savvy a puppet-master not to recognise the value of a man like Bodie, too. Hence Bodie's precipitous rise to right-hand man. Alongside his partner.

Not a loner, interestingly; not Bodie the ex-jungle rat. Cowley in general liked partnerships. CI5 was built on the concept of two-agent teams, point and counterpoint, another of the Cow's pragmatic decisions: He favoured teams because they were mostly more effective than lone-wolf agents. He'd paired Bodie with Doyle and kept them together despite not only initial fireworks--their early days together had become something of a squad legend--but also, more crucially, Bodie's eventual alteration of his contract with that fine print addendum of his.

I reckoned Cowley had wet dreams about just what Bodie the cool, calculating, suave killing machine could be if only he were working on his tod to Cowley's string-pulling alone, yet he kept Bodie partnered with Doyle. Even with the split in Bodie's loyalty.

And now the Cow was saddling me with Doyle temporarily. I wondered why Cowley was splitting up his top team; wondered if it might be because Doyle shouldn't be in much danger on this one, searching for a set of kidnappers daft enough to have let one of their victims escape through a window. Cowley'd have Bodie's full attention wherever it was he needed it.

In the meantime, I'd have Doyle at my back and Doyle wasn't the easy read Bodie was. Getting a steady reading on Doyle was like trying to mud-wrestle a boa constrictor; before you managed to get any kind of grip on him at all, he was likely to have either wriggled away entirely or be choking you to death. Impossible to predict which one it might be, far as I'd ever been able to tell.

At first glance, Doyle was simply fiery scruff to Bodie's cool elegance. While Bodie sauntered the CI5 hallways with deadly force thinly masked behind charm and smiling eyes, Doyle was a lion in skin-tight moleskins and red Kickers. Bodie's very appearance soothed with false amity and security, while Doyle's jarred and grabbed attention. I'd only seen Doyle a few times, but there was never anything consistent about him to pin down. Boa constrictor one moment, lion the next; I'd even glimpsed a bunny once, all big eyes and soft curls, fangs hidden.

Because he had fangs, Doyle did, just as lethal, according to reports, as Bodie's. It's just that Bodie's were always there to eyes discerning enough to see, whereas Doyle's might or might not be apparent, which in itself might or might not be significant. He might not seem to have fangs at any given moment, but that might not mean he wasn't capable of a vicious bite. With Doyle, the bunny might be more deadly than the lion.

That was the thing about Doyle: It was all might-be's and maybe's and seems-to-be's. Was even Cowley able to predict Doyle's behaviour in any given situation?

Doyle should've been called bloody Tam Lin and be done with it.

I knew, and Cowley knew--and likely anyone on the squad with two brain cells to rub together knew--Bodie would throw all his ruthless determination into protecting his partner if matters came to shove.

What Cowley might know, but I didn't and couldn't stop wondering about, was if the reverse was true. Was Bodie expending his impassioned devotion clinging to a prince? Or was Bodie just a deluded nutter as like to get a claw across his jugular if he rubbed Doyle the wrong way as a thug who sparked Doyle's ex-copper rage?

From what I'd been able to deduce, Doyle didn't have any special small print written into his contract. Bodie would sink up to his eyeballs in shit for Doyle, but Doyle...well, Doyle would what? Would he put orders and duty and the drive to protect innocent strangers before his partner's need? Or, alternatively, would he abandon Cowley and justice and land and Queen to save or sink with Bodie?

Did anyone the fuck know? Because this wasn't an idle question any more, given Doyle was going to be at _my_ back temporarily.

Maybe Cowley knew. He had an uncanny knack for reading people. Three years and nine months ago, I'd've trusted it enough to go along, but a wannabe terrorist with a nail bomb blowing up himself and my partner because of a slight flaw in one of Cowley's eggshell structures had changed more than just my working status.

I didn't mind the idea of working with Doyle; damned good agent. That much was clear no matter how murky the rest of the waters were. Being as pragmatic as Cowley, though, I'd've preferred Bodie since I'd have known exactly where I stood with him. Doyle was a damned enigma.

Maybe his small print was written in invisible ink. I wouldn't put it past Doyle to deliberately make it hard as possible for anyone to pin him down. Bodie might be able to read it, and Cowley. I bloody couldn't. Bodie and Cowley might also, one or both, have no trouble reconciling the lion, the boa constrictor, the bunny and all of Doyle's other forms into one cohesive whole.

Even Doyle's looks were unstable. Bodie's good looks were as integral and unchanging a part of him as everything else. Doyle's face, on the other hand, was a Moebius strip, constantly spiralling through dozens of permutations from scraggy ugliness to odd, alluring beauty depending on light, mood, company and possibly the moon in Aquarius, who the hell knew.

So, when Doyle picked me up at the meeting spot Cowley had appointed, I was prepared to do the job while watching my own back. Nothing really new there. At least I trusted Doyle wouldn't do anything stupid.

Though I'd never got the impression he was into idle chit-chat until that first meeting. Chalk up one more for Doyle and his unpredictability.

He looked good that day. That's one of the fascinations of people with changeable mugs, isn't it? Can't help checking every time to see if they're the dog's breakfast or banquet at the Dorchester today. On that scale, Doyle was luncheon at a high-class bordello on the job with me, all long, slender legs encased in tight denim, green T-shirt that pulled tight across his pecs, and a brown tweed jacket that added a touch of style. It also unfortunately hid his bum as he walked away when we stopped for a break, but he was still worth watching for those legs and his gracefulness. When he leaned back against the railings on the Embankment, elbows pulled back and hips thrust forward, the luncheon he symbolised became a leisurely extended one.

I was ninety-six percent certain Doyle's innate sensuality played a not-insignificant role in the writing of Bodie's small print, but I filed Doyle away nonetheless for later potential munching of my own. Like everything else about him, Doyle was impossible to pin down in regards to his relationship with Bodie. But since he was here, and chatty anyway, I figured maybe the direct approach would get a result.

"You work with Bodie most times, right?" I asked casually, biting into my bacon roll.

"Yeah." Doyle was staring across the river as we walked.

I glanced at him, noticing again the ease of self-confidence he exuded. "I've heard Bodie can be a right pain--"

"Bodie's all right." Flat and definite, no room for argument.

He turned and looked straight at me. Waiting. I met his eyes, which looked steadily into mine; no menace, no threat, but a quiet, unaccommodating message nonetheless. Engage, and I'd meet a brick wall; disengage, and we could go back to the tentative good-will we'd built over the past few hours of futile driving around together.

"All right, just testing."

I hid a smile in a sip of coffee and another bite of my bacon roll. Okay, then. Even mild verbal assaults on his partner triggered that renowned temper of Doyle's. Good to know both for the job at hand and as Step One in the demystifying of Raymond Doyle, a new quest that was becoming more appealing by the moment now I was feeling the magnetism in his actual company.

"Yeah, you're okay, Doyle. Your mouth flaps a bit too much, but you're okay."

And as Doyle immediately flared up in response, I added the data to my check-list: he wasn't quite entirely unpredictable, then. Finding Doyle's various hidden buttons and figuring out what happened when they were pressed could, I hazily suspected, become a dangerously consuming pastime, like watching his ever-changing face.

But, hell, it would be all right. An occasional dinner-dance date didn't mean wedded bloody bliss. Doyle was safe--for definitions of "safe" Cowley's mob of lunatics would recognise--to play about with casually because he already had a partner; and not just any partner, but Bodie with all that unshakable devotion.

Bodie'd never let me close enough to Doyle to be in any danger of losing my perfectly comfortable lone-wolf status--the way Bodie himself had. It'd take the world going arse over tits to change anything in that dynamic.

Nah, I was perfectly safe.


End file.
